a priori
by Animegirl1129
Summary: In which a cat is not dead.


a prior

_**For delina - I really hope you like this. It's probably not quite as dark as you'd like but I tried to make it as ominous as I could. This was my first attempt at writing for Re-Animator so I'm still working things out with these characters, as well. Hope you have a Happy Yuletide.**_

_**Could be pre-slash or implied relationship for Dan/Herbert.**_

_**Characters not mine! Reviews/kudos are awesome!**_

* * *

"About the cat…"

The statement catches Dan off guard as he walks in the front door of their cemetery adjacent home after a long overnight shift and a morning of running errands. He very much just wants to go to bed, but while that would be a fairly innocuous statement from most other people on the planet, from Herbert West, it tells him all too much.

With a resigned sigh, he says, "Don't tell me. The bag of cat food I just bought at the market will no longer have a use because the cat I've been feeding has been dead, however briefly, alive again, and then dead again a bit more permanently?" He finally makes it through the door, past Herbert, and plops the paper bags down on the kitchen table. He's surprised to see the friendly black cat that reminds him of Rufus blinking up at him from where it is casually lounging on one of the chairs.

"Not exactly." Herbert lifts the cat and offers it – all in one piece and not cobbled together with bits of other once-alive-once-dead creatures – to Dan for inspection. "It's been dead five times so far, and somehow it's managed to retain its personality."

"How?"

It looks like it hurts Herbert to admit, but his answer is an irritated, "I've absolutely no idea."

* * *

They're in the basement for the rest of the day and well into the night, intent on making sense of this breakthrough.

In every way that matters, the creatures they've brought back have been nothing more than monsters. Violent and volatile and if they retained anything at all of their personalities it was always the worst parts. They didn't heal from whatever injuries they'd had prior to meeting their demise and any they gained afterward would remain. They didn't eat, they didn't sleep. So what was different about this cat versus every other subject they've ever injected with the reagent?

Maybe something about this particular batch of reagent was the cause?

Dan watches as Herbert quickly puts the theory to the test. He doses a lab rat with his newly perfected heart attack drug and promptly resurrects it with reagent from the same vial he'd used with the cat. The rat stirs, screeching a high-pitched sort of tortured screech, and as is usually the case with their specimens, immediately gets violent. It lunges for Herbert's too close fingers, an attack which he only narrowly manages to avoid.

Decidedly not the reagent, then.

Maybe the cat itself has some sort of genetic predisposition that allows a favorable reaction to the reagent? If that is the case, though, they'll be hard pressed to prove it short of a litter of equally resilient kittens. It also doesn't seem averse to violence in general, because it saves Herbert the trouble of killing the reanimated rat a second time when it eagerly leaps from Dan's lap, where it settled in for a cat nap some two hours earlier, to the table. It pounces on the distressed rat with all the fervor any normal cat possesses and swiftly removes the rodents head from its body.

"How'd the cat die, anyway?" He asks, when it wanders its way back to his lap once it has finished its snack, purring contentedly as it cleans the blood from its face. It occurs to him now that the feline is not visibly injured. He eyes Herbert's new drug accusingly, "Did you-"

Herbert looks unimpressed by the implication. "I don't kill things that you are fond of, Daniel."

Dan can't argue with him. He'd checked the trash the day they'd found Rufus in Herbert's room, before Herbert had introduced him to his work on the reagent. There had, indeed, been a peanut butter jar there and when he'd taken a closer look, he'd seen evidence that Herbert's story had been true despite Meg's suspicions. And while Dan could blame Meg's death on Herbert's work, he'd be kidding himself if he didn't put just as much blame upon himself for his part in the experiments. "So what happened?"

"Someone left lilies on a grave in the cemetery," Herbert explains. "If you were unaware, they are highly toxic to cats and yours must have eaten enough of them to induce acute kidney failure." The man returns his attention to his notes, where he's busy scribbling data point after data point and looking very much not like he intends to stop anytime soon. "You should get some rest," Herbert offers him the out, and Dan, exhausted and more than ready to admit defeat for the day, takes it. He heads upstairs with the cat following after him.

They'll figure it out sooner or later.

* * *

The next morning dawns on a perfectly normal day in their house.

Dan is making breakfast.

Herbert is making monsters.

There comes the loud, tinny sound of something made of glass exploding on impact and it probably says a lot that Dan doesn't find the sound all that disturbing anymore. It happens often enough. Another crash a few seconds later draws him away from the stove and toward the basement door, just to be safe, "You okay down there?" He calls down, receives a muffled response that's debatably affirmative in nature from Herbert and returns in time to save the eggs from burning.

Five minutes later, Herbert emerges from the basement, looking just as irritated as he always does after a morning in the lab produces lackluster results.

"No luck?" Dan asks, just to make small-talk, which, while not something Herbert ever enjoys, he always tolerates from Dan.

Herbert sits down to breakfast and frowns. "No, Dan. Whatever variable caused our feline friend to defy the usual violent predisposition remains a mystery." The cat in question is currently lounging in the sunbeams on the floor of the living room, sound asleep. "I'll leave you to keep an eye on the beast – I'm on shift at noon."

"Of course," Dan answers, planning to catch up on some sleep himself before the chaos begins anew when Herbert returns home tonight.

* * *

The house is always so cold, Dan thinks, when he wakes up late in the afternoon. He looks for his favorite sweater, but comes up empty on a search of his room. Downstairs, then. He must have left it down there last night. He heads to the basement, the cat an ever-present shadow at his feet. It's easy enough to find, thrown over the back of his chair. He grabs it and turns to go – only the cat catches his attention. It's found the tank holding Herbert's lab rats. The feline yowls at the captive prey, bats at the glass keeping them safely away from it.

When it's clear that the cat is not getting to these particular snacks, it shifts its attention to the garbage in the corner, where the remains of whatever unsuccessful attempt Herbert had made this morning have likely been discarded. The cat fishes out the corpse of another twice-dead rat and looks rather pleased with itself for its discovery.

Dan observes all of this and a thought occurs to him.

* * *

The second Dan hears the sound of a car pulling into the drive, he's at the door. He's been anxiously pacing for hours now, thinking over his realization. "I figured it out," he announces, as soon as Herbert is close enough to hear. It's an exchange not unlike the one they had last night, when it had been Herbert eager to share surprising news. "I know what's different."

Herbert appears just as surprised as Dan is – fair enough, it's not usually Dan coming up with the scientific breakthroughs in their relationship. "Feel free to enlighten me, then, Dan."

"I think we solved it last year. Or," he amends, "you did."

"What?"

Dan elaborates as Herbert edges him back into the house, "When Hill attacked you in the morgue. I think… I think he might have killed you. But, I think you came back. Because you and the cat have something in common."

"Daniel," Herbert demands, the last of his patience for this drawn out explanation gone, "Tell me."

"Prior exposure to the reagent," Dan offers the theory, and then proceeds to his reasoning. "The rats –the cats been eating them, unintentionally dosing itself with the reagent still in their systems." It's only as the words leave his mouth, though, that it occurs to him that this might not have been the wisest course of action. Herbert will want to test this theory and the only other subject they have that's being previously exposed to the reagent is Herbert himself.

Dan would swear he could see the other man's mind racing with this new information. "Of course!" He declares, as all of the puzzle pieces fall into very logical places. "Of course… That's why Doctor Gruber wasn't violent, either. We'd both been exposed to earlier forms of the reagent in testing and so while the post-mortem dose was too much for his system, the prior exposure kept him from attacking."

Herbert starts a mad dash for the basement, and Dan doesn't quite know what he intends to do, but he's known the man long enough to know that whatever it is won't be good, so he rushes after the other man. "Wait!" He shouts, though it does nothing to stop him, as Herbert moves about the lab with a sort of manic determination. Dan is sure he's about to do something stupid, like dose himself with the heart attack drug and leave Dan to prove the theory. "Herbert! It doesn't matter!"

That works, though. Herbert frowns, wheels on him, incredulous. "We've finally done it, Dan – we've figured out how to defeat Death – and it 'doesn't matter'?"

Dan reaches out, stops him from measuring out a new dose of the reagent when there is no subject present to inject with it. "Not yet, it doesn't. There's still too much we don't know about this. We don't know how much exposure is needed. You aren't shooting up with it any more, it's not in your system like it was then. We don't know long-term effects. Can we maybe solve _some_ of those problems before we jump right to extremes?"

Before Herbert can protest, Dan brings up the compromise they made upon their return from Peru. Dan had promised to maintain their partnership, but only if Herbert stuck to animal subjects until they worked out the kinks with the reagent. It made no sense to risk human trials (and the legal, moral, and potentially lethal ramifications that came with them) when there was clearly something wrong. And apparently Herbert wanted him around enough to agree. Since then, as far as Dan is aware, Herbert's complied with the terms of their agreement and from Dan's perspective, this still counts.

Begrudgingly, Herbert sets down the syringe. "Fine."

* * *

"There's a call for you, Doctor Cain," the unit secretary waves him over as he passes by the nurse's station late into his shift the following night. "I was just about to page you. It's Doctor West."

He'd been on his way to check on a patient who'd just gotten back from Radiology, but he ducks behind the desk to take the phone, a pit of dread in his stomach. Herbert never calls him at work. "Herbert?"

"I need you to come home right now."

Alarm flairs immediately, because he knows what this has to be about.

"Don't you dare," he warns, but the call has already ended. Only a dial tone echoes in his ears. He drops the phone and takes off, rushing out of the hospital to his car as fast as possible. Herbert surely knows exactly the time table he's working with, knows exactly how long it takes to get from the hospital to their house and Dan needs to be faster to get there before Herbert does something he can't undo.

"Idiot," he mumbles, though he's not sure if he means Herbert or himself for not seeing this coming.

He shaves several minutes off the usual drive time and barely remembers to throw the car into park before he's scrambling out of it and into the house.

He barrels down the stairs to the basement, practically skids down the last few when the sight of Herbert lying on the floor brings him up short, no matter how much he expected it.

"Don't you dare," Dan says again, sinking to his knees at Herbert's side and checking for a pulse, for a heartbeat, for anything that would tell him that Herbert isn't as dead as he looks. "Don't you fucking dare!" Finding no sign of life, he starts CPR on instinct, the heel of one hand settling over the base of the sternum, his other hand interlocking over that. He presses down hard and fast, can feel the cartilage pop under the force of the compressions. He swaps to mouth to mouth for the requisite two breaths, checks for a pulse and finds none. Back to compressions.

"You don't get to do this to me, too, West!" he rails at Herbert, when he's gone five rounds with no change.

He stares down at the pale, lifeless body laid before him. It's clear what Herbert wanted him to do but he's frozen. He's afraid that their theory was wrong, that prior exposure to the reagent isn't the answer, after all. He's afraid it won't work - that if Herbert comes back like almost every other thing they've ever injected with the reagent, if Herbert comes back violent and volatile and not himself, then it will be his responsibility to put an end to it. He's not sure he can do that. He's never been able to stop Herbert when he was alive, he has no illusions that it would be any easier faced with Herbert dead. He's afraid that they're right, that it will work - that Herbert will come back exactly the same way he's always been, just as single-mindedly determined as ever only now with the answers he's been looking for all along. He'll have beaten death once and for all and quite frankly, Dan's a little terrified of someone, anyone, even Herbert, having that power. And maybe he's just plain afraid to lose Herbert, the only person he has left.

And maybe that's the heart of the situation, he thinks, as he picks up the hypodermic already filled with the correct dosage of the glowing green liquid. Herbert had left it for him, before he'd dosed himself with the heart attack drug. He's afraid to lose Herbert and he could in so very many ways.

But he's definitely losing him if he does nothing.

So he pushes the injection.

And waits.

It takes exactly 27 seconds for Herbert to gasp his way back to life, and those 27 seconds seem to last an eternity for Dan. Herbert's eyes are wide and wild and a scream tears out of him as the pain of returning to life sets in, leaving him shaking on the floor.

"You with me?" Dan asks, when the shaking stops, terrified of the answer he'll get. Resounding 'yes' or garbled fit of rage.

Herbert stares down at his own hands, checks himself over bodily, feeling for his own pulse and trying to move entirely too quickly for someone who was, only seconds ago, literally dead.

"Herbert?"

Herbert shifts closer to him, his eyes still wary and almost manic.

"Herbert?"

Herbert's hands land on his face, his voice soothing in a way that it only ever is when Dan's distressed. "It's me, Danny," he promises, "It worked. We've done it, Dan. We defeated Death."

He doesn't know what to think. He's angry, furious at Herbert for taking this chance, for forcing him into this situation like he's been forced into so many others in the time since Herbert walked into his life. Beyond that, though, is relief – that it worked, that Herbert is back and himself and not something Dan has to fend off. And he's terrified of what this means for their future – for everyone's future. A world without death…

Dan, still unable to tear his eyes away from Herbert, finally relents and pulls the other man in close. He can only hope that he wasn't the one to create a monster this time.


End file.
